The Drug War: An effort meant to save us
from a form of moral decay became its own insidious brand of moral
perversion — turning people who should have been patients into prisoners,
criminalizing victimless behavior, targeting those whose first offense was
entering the world wrapped in the wrong skin. It feeds our achingly
contradictory tendency toward prudery and our overwhelming thirst for
punishment.

The New York Police Department under Mayor
Michael Bloomberg has made more of these minor drug arrests than under his
previous three predecessors combined. These targeting tactics mean that
blacks are arrested for minor drug possession at seven times the rate of
whites although on national surveys whites consistently say that they use
marijuana more than blacks or Hispanics.

The
war on drugs in this country has become a war focused on marijuana, one
being waged primarily against minorities and promoted, fueled and financed
primarily by Democratic politicians.... This
is outrageous and immoral and the Democrat’s complicity is unconscionable,
particularly for a party that likes to promote its social justice bona
fides.No one knows all the
repercussions of legalizing marijuana, but it is clear that criminalizing it
has made it a life-ruining racial weapon. When will politicians have the
courage to stand up, acknowledge this fact and stop allowing young minority
men to be collateral damage

On
average last year, someone was arrested every 10 minutes inNew
York Cityfor
possessing a few pinches of marijuana — less than 25 grams — and no other
crime. More arrests, 50,383, were made in 2010 on this charge than on any
other, and arrests are being made at an even faster pace this year. “They’re
clogging the courts and ruining people’s lives, in terms of potential
collateral consequences for housing, employment, immigration,” said Steven
Banks, the attorney in chief of the Legal Aid Society, which represented
30,000 people in minor marijuana cases last year.

More people are arrested inNew
York Cityon
charges of possessing small amounts of marijuana than on any other crime on
the books. Nearly all are black or Latino males under the age of 25, most
with no previous convictions. Many have never been arrested before.

No
city in the world arrests more of its citizens for using pot thanNew
York, according to statistics compiled by Harry G. Levine, aQueensCollegesociologist.
Nearly nine out of ten people charged with violating the law are black or
Latino, although national surveys have shown that whites are the heaviest
users of pot. Mr. Bloomberg himself acknowledged in 2001 that he had used
it, and enjoyed it.

An investigation by WNYC
suggests that some police officers may be violating people’s constitutional
rights when they are making marijuana arrests. Current and former cops,
defense lawyers and more than a dozen men arrested for the lowest-level
marijuana possession say illegal searches take place during stop-and-frisks,
which are street encounters carried out overwhelmingly on blacks and
Latinos.

More than a dozen men who were
arrested in these precincts for misdemeanor marijuana possession told WNYC
the police recovered marijuana on them through illegal searches. None of
them challenged these allegedly illegal searches in court.

This month, the Drug Policy Alliance — a New
York group that is supporting Proposition 19 — released a study showing that
blacks were arrested for possession at far higher rates than whites in
California’s 25 largest counties, often two or three times higher. In those
25 counties, blacks make up 7 percent of the population but accounted for 20
percent of the marijuana possession arrests; in Los Angeles County, which
accounts for about a quarter of the state’s population, blacks were arrested
for marijuana possession at three times the rate of whites.

Last
year, black New Yorkers were seven times more likely than whites to be
arrested for marijuana possession and no more serious crime. Latinos were
four times more likely.
In 2008, the police made more pot arrests “than in the 12 years of Mayor
Koch, plus the four years of Mayor Dinkins, plus the first two years of
Mayor Giuliani,” Mr. Levine wrote. “In
other words, in one year, 2008, Bloomberg made more pot arrests than in 18
years of Koch, Dinkins and Giuliani combined.”

On the one hand,
marijuana is practically legal – more mainstream, accessorized, andtaken
for granted than ever before. On the other, kids are getting busted in the
city in record numbers. Guess which kids.